Rape charges 'a fashion': India right-wing party

NEW DELHI--Indian right-wing Hindu party Shiv Sena said Saturday filing sexual assault charges has "become a fashion" in an article backing a police officer accused of rape.

The hard-line Hindu nationalist outfit, based in western Maharashtra state and a key ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, threw its support behind a senior state police officer accused of rape by a model and questioned the complainant's intentions.

"Cases of charging men with molestation and rape in (high society) to create hype is on a rise now. It has almost become a fashion," the Shiv Sena wrote in its party mouthpiece, "Saamana" (To Confront).

"After he has served for so many years in the police force, one model now charges DIG (deputy inspector general) Sunil Paraskar with rape and in one night he becomes a villain.

"Such accusations have become good weapons to seek personal revenge."

It added the Indian judicial system needed to "open its eyes" and protect the innocent because "all the laws in the country favor women so anyone can slap any charge against anyone."

India toughened sex assault laws following the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in December 2012 which sparked nationwide protests, but the move has done little to stem sex attacks against women.

The model who filed the rape complaint, and who cannot be named for legal reasons, hit out at the Shiv Sena article later Saturday.

"This matter is in court, no-one should be commenting in sensitive matters like this without knowing all the facts," the woman told national news agency Press Trust of India.

Last month, the alleged rape of a six-year-old girl in a school triggered a series of street protests by angry parents and political activists over the lack of safety for women and children in the country.

A 16-year-old girl in Dehi was also gang-raped at gunpoint in June while a seven-year-old girl was found hanging from a tree in a village in West Bengal state. Locals suspect she was raped.